What indexing information?

Without fulltext indexing, we need some index information, or metadata, to index documents.

Most sites already maintain index files containing brief descriptions of the publications available. Why not use them?

A typical entry might look like:

TR 319   Andrew J. Hanson.  The Rolling Ball: Context-Free Control
         of Spatial Orientation with Two-Dimensional Input Devices.
         (November 1990)
         17 pgs

Others might contain significantly more or less information and structure.

This provides a lot more indexing information than a typical Gopher menu entry for Veronica:

Technical Report 94-032

or a typical FTP filename in Archie:

     tr94-032.ps.Z

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